Cities Trying To Keep Art In The Picture

April 27, 1986|By Lindsey Gruson, New York Times

PHILADELPHIA — Cities around the country are increasingly embracing the arts as a key to economic development, investing millions of dollars in cultural activities despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.

Some places -- Minneapolis is a notable example -- have long promoted culture for its own sake. Increasingly, however, other cities are frankly trying to cash in on a fact of life that New York has always understood: The arts can also be an important economic prop.

''Culture and economic development must be Siamese twins,'' said Fred Fine, commissioner of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs.

The competition for arts and culture has pushed cities to nurture existing institutions as well as to seek new ones. When Dallas started wooing the Museum of the American Indian, for instance, New York City responded last year by offering the long-neglected institution inducements to stay.

In some cities, monumental new arts centers have become financial albatrosses, consuming arts financing while staging only ''safe'' productions. Other cities, including Philadelphia and Chicago, are trying to avoid that fate by emphasizing aid to community groups and individual artists.

Whether such an approach is good for the cities and for the arts is not always clear. With few exceptions, cities in the past saw arts as a luxury and did little more than exempt cultural institutions from municipal taxes.

Among the results of the new rush to culture are these:

-- Bidding against a dozen rivals to become the home of a new museum of popular music, Cleveland has offered a package of incentives worth about $40 million to a group seeking to establish a rock 'n' roll hall of fame.

-- Despite financial problems that have forced New Orleans to slash funds for many essential services, the city has raised arts funding from 0.5 percent to 1.2 percent of its annual budget.

-- Six years after it opened, the $45 million Denver Center for the Performing Arts is mired in red ink. It is hobbled by a bloated operating budget and a program that critics compare with television fare.

Several studies commissioned by cities, museums and chambers of commerce have shown that culture can provide a huge economic stimulus. The Marc Chagall exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last summer, for instance, pumped $7.5 million into the city's economy.

Philadelphia's South Street until a few years ago was beset by spreading devastation. But then artists moved their studios into the area. And just as happened in Soho in Manhattan, the artists were followed by cafes, boutiques and restaurants. Now South Street is one of the liveliest streets in the city, and it is the center of Philadelphia's night life.

Philadelphia has proposed increasing arts funds by dedicating a portion of the city's revenue from hotel and motel taxes to culture, as do San Francisco, Atlanta and Houston. Alternatively, it may set up a cultural taxing district that would include the suburbs, as have Chicago and St. Louis.

But Philadelphia has decided not to build an arts complex. ''Bricks and mortar do not artists make,'' said Oliver Franklin, deputy city representative for arts and culture. ''Other cities have tried to get into it with quantity items. But as long as you do that, you're going to miss the individual artist. We need to make it more exciting for people who are creative to live here.''

Like St. Paul, Minn., Philadelphia also is working with its Industrial Development Corp. to provide cultural groups with services traditionally reserved for businesses.

''When a company comes to town, we say 'What do you want?' '' Franklin said. ''We're trying to do the same thing with artists. We're competing with other cities for artists.''

Los Angeles sponsored an arts festival in conjunction with the 1984 Olympic Games and modified zoning and parking codes so that small theater groups could thrive in renovated storefronts and warehouses.

In October, Mayor Raymond L. Flynn of Boston announced that the city would require developers to set aside space for the arts. He also appointed a panel to prepare a proposal for restoring the city's crime-plagued theater district. St. Paul's comprehensive effort in support of the arts has helped finance the reconstruction of artists' lofts and the construction of five theaters, including the World Theater, an old vaudeville hall that has found new fame as the site of the public-radio program A Prairie Home Companion.

Like other cities that have built arts complexes, St. Paul has hopes that its center will stimulate redevelopment in much the way that Lincoln Center has done in New York.

Many critics deride art centers.

''Buildings are a way to take on burdens, not to bring exellence to people,'' said Martin E. Segal, the chairman of Lincoln Center.

One example is the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, the Rocky Mountains' largest and richest cultural institution. From the moment it opened on New Year's Eve 1979 with an audacious production of Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, the center has been hobbled by controversy and excess costs.

Some local performers charged that it is a ''cultural palace,'' undermining smaller, more innovative theaters.

''Up to the present time, I haven't noticed a positive influence from the DCPA,'' said Ed Baierlein, director-manager of the Germinal Stage Denver, a small alternative theater. ''But we've managed to survive the DCPA.''